Small can be very beautiful

Clusters of plays, as in festivals, dominate my memories of the past 12 months. I include in that loose definition The Leenane Trilogy by Martin McDonagh, the wunderkind brought to the stage by Galway's Druid company, led by Garry Hynes. Like most others - there were some dissenters - I found myself in thrall to the author's gallery of grotesques, and convulsed with the improbable laughter generated by their cruel predicaments. The Gate Theatre's second Pinter Festival remains vividly in my mind as a brilliant elucidation of an author whose work has been endorsed by the elitist of critics: time. The great man came himself as actor and director, and was impressive in both roles. The Gate's house style, if one may call it that, seeks to achieve the highest production standards, and the combination of top actors, clued-in directors and refined settings made for a memorable experience.

With the autumn came the Dublin Theatre Festival and its eclectic blend of theatre from home and abroad. It had garnered the first Dublin productions of The Leenane Trilogy, and it was a telling tribute to find the large Olympia Theatre packed with punters delighted to sit through three consecutive plays in a single day.

There were other highlights, though not as many as one might have hoped for. The Romanian director Silviu Purcarete brought the National Theatre of Craiova with Phaedra and Titus Andronicus, and they were in his vision different and riveting. The Abbey launched Thomas Kilroy's cool and polished The Secret Fall of Constance Wilde, earning packed houses. Elsinore, a one-man version of Hamlet created by Canada's Robert Lepage with extraordinary multi-media effects, caught my attention of the moment, but I find that I have no wish to repeat the experience.

The summer's Lambert Puppet Festival is now thoroughly international, and pitched at both children and adults. My personal favourites were Anton Anderle's The Smallest Circus in the World from Poland, and the extraordinary Tolpavakoothu from the temples of India, a display of shadow puppets in battles between good and evil, an art form which may soon be extinct.

Many of my smaller pleasures came in the smaller venues, from companies with a lot more talent than money. Loose Canon, directed by Jason Byrne, brought life and vigour to Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, on stages sans costumes or sets. Gerry Stembridge's irreverent directorial flair reshaped Lennox Robinson's chestnut The Whiteheaded Boy for the special talents of the Barabbas company, and souped up Shakespeare's Pericles for the Dublin Youth Theatre. Enda Walsh had another palpable hit with a commissioned play, Sucking Dublin, and his earlier Disco Pigs made its concussive way to the fore at home and abroad. Small can be very beautiful: try it in 1998.

Highlight: The sheer excitement of Martin McDonagh's explosive arrival.

Lowlight: The passing of the musical JFK, briefly and Titanic-like, through Dublin's Olympia Theatre.

Wishlist 1998

1) That the dispensers of public funds to the Abbey will recognise that a National Theatre must be free to take risks, and that box- office returns cannot be the critical determinant in its programme.

2) For a subsidised Dublin venue where visiting companies from the provinces, and new playwrights generally, may be encouraged to set out their stalls without fear of bankruptcy.

3) That the Arts Council will consider the funding, for those small companies who have shown them- selves to be here for the long haul, of efficient administration to complement their artistic drive.

4) For a national epidemic of theatre's maladie extraordinaire, the virulent must-see bug.